I would love for the Minister of Fisheries, Joanne Thompson, to be able to visit my home so I could show her the folders of letters I have written to various Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) officials, federal ministers, etc… over the years.
I started writing them around 1970, when I first realized the slaughter of our fishery resource — our raison d’être, as it were, for coastal communities and the folks that called them home.
Needless to say, my concerns and my predictions fell on deaf ears and sadly to say they were realized long before July 1, 1992, as our cod traps were pretty much empty years before the groundfish moratorium was announced.
Now, 34 years later, there is more cod around the shores of Twillingate Isles than I have ever witnessed in all my seven decades on the ocean, starting in the 1950s while fishing with father and crew using cod traps.
I told my friends today that if we had a cod trap out now, we wouldn’t get it up based on the amount in cod nets along the shoreline — every fish glutted with capelin.
Again, this is due in part to the government realizing the vital importance of capelin — the lower end of the food chain for cod, whales, puffins and a multitude of seabirds.
So, after all this time, 34 long, lean years, the greatest resource on the planet appears to be relatively healthy again, but the big question is will we keep it that way for the sake of rural communities or will we repeat the errors of the past and hope for a different result, which would be the epitome of a crime against nature and the people of this province?
I am afraid this might be another exercise in futility as dragging is indiscriminately killing anything and everything that gets in the cod end due to tremendous pressure on the catch as it is winched aboard the large draggers.
Cod nets, as in the accompanying photo, used by inshore fishers, allow smaller fish to swim through the mesh and every fish caught is a merchantable cod. A sustainable method as long as it’s used with caution and hauled daily.
So, I say to the minister, please protect the spawning biomass by being very, very cautious with allowing draggers on the winter spawning grounds. We have an opportunity after all these years to do the right thing and have a sustainable, small boat fishery.
Thank you for your time and attention.
David Boyd
Twillingate, N.L.
